courtney, amelia and even meredith who went all the way up to buffalo injured. fantastic team. we can learn everything from those girls. >> there are so many ways to describe what's going on right now with the fbi and the cia. >> soup/sandwich? >> that's a good one. >> go rodeo. >> bye-bye. >> my favorite perhaps. if it's way too early, it's "morning joe." but now -- >> "the rundown" with chuck todd. >> chuckles. well, even more surprises this morning in the events that led to the resignation of cia director david petraeus. the fbi finds that marine general john allen, who was set to take over nato soon, exchanged thousands of pages of e-mails with the woman who says she was harassed by petraeus' mistre mistress. this is for real, folks. this is not a soap opera and we're just getting started.

back on capitol hill, questions keep growing about who knew what and when on the petraeus situation that now involved the cia, the fbi the pentagon, the white house, and congress. so much for nothing to distract from avoiding the fiscal cliff. and recommend how president obama and mitt romney yukd yucked it up? the president had the last laugh. find out how he did it in today's deep dive. it's not how you think. good morning from washington. it's tuesday, november 13, 2012. this is "the daily rundown." i'm chuck todd. right to my first read of the morning. st when you thought the petraeus story couldn't get more complicated and troubling. it did. lots of headlines to get to on this. another top military general linked to the scandal, marine general john allen, the top american and nato commander in afghanistan. according to a u.s. senior defense official the fbi uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of e-mails between the general and jill kelley. now kelley is the woman whose initial complaint to the fbi led

to the discovery of evidence about the affair between general petraeus and his biographer paula broadwell. defense secretary panetta's comments on the scandal and his future in the obama administration. then there's the fbi agent and friend of jill kel yae's. he's now subject of an internal fbi probe himself for inappropriate behavior. let's get into the details. overnight the pentagon announced this, that general allen's nomination to be allied supreme commander over all of anywnato been delayed and panetta has asked them to ex pa diet joseph dunfer. >> while this matter is under investigation and before the facts are determined, general allen will remain commander. general allen is entitled to due process in this matter. in the meantime the secretary has asked the president, and the president has agreed, to put his

nomination on hold until the relevant facts are determined. >> all right. that's pentagon spokesman george little. he's on a trip to asia with the defense secretary. more on that trip in a minute. allen, who is married, denied any wrongdoing and, for now, remains commander in afghanistan as the investigation continues. defense secretary leon panetta was informed by the pentagon's general counsel on sunday of this fbi investigation into general allen. panetta turned the matter over to the pentagon's inspector general and then told the white house that same day. the u.s. official tells nbc news that the chairman of the joint chiefs, general martin dempsey, called general allen monday night to inform him of the defense department investigation. this morning the national security council spokesperson tommy vietor said the president has put on hold his nomination

pending the investigation of all allen. general allen continues to lead as a he has so ably done for over a year. meanwhile, the fbi is trying to wrap up the case involving paula broadwell. on monday night a team of fbi agents removed boxes and other items from her north carolina home. it was a consensual search which, according to a senior law enfo enforcement official, is part of an effort to complete the investigation into whether she may have violated laws against cyber stalking or cyber bullying by sending those anonymous e-mails to kelley. as we know more about the contents of those e-mails, officials say the first e-mail broadwell sent accuse d kelly o, quote, improper socializing with generals in tampa. we'll have a live report from outside broadwell's home. defense secretary panetta is weighing in calling the resignation the right step and is criticizing the fbi for not informing members of its

investigation. >> i believe there is a responsibility to make sure that the intelligence committees are informed of issues that could affect, you know, the security of those intelligence operations. >> reporters asked panetta whether there are any indications petraeus' affair began while he was on active duty and if it did whether he could face prosecution. >> well, i don't know the answer to that. i'm reading the papers like you are to determine just what the committee finds out. we obvious ly watch this closel to determine just exactly when that took place. >> as you know, both paula broadwell, general petraeus, and friends of general petraeus have all painstakingly made the claim that this affair didn't start until after he left the army. as if the case weren't complicated enough, the

officials say the fbi agent and friend of kelley's who first launched the investigation is under investigation himself for inappropriate behave are yiorbe. ready? for sending kelley shirtless pictures of himself. anyway, it's a he very, very convolu convoluted story. it's a bad soap opera script at this point. by the way, it wasn't the biggest post election story going to be the fiscal cliff? the president is bringing his outside game in on the debt debate hosting labor and progressive leaders at the white house. tomorrow he'll try to tighten the screws by bringing in leaders from the business community. thursday he'll argue his case to the public. all before host iing bipartisan leaders of congress at the white house on friday. among the labor leaders today, the presidents of the afl-cio, asme anded education association. republicans in exchange for tax hikes want to make structural changes to some programs like social security and medicare.

that's their price for tax increases on 0 the wealthy. can he get democrats to back some of these changes in the eligibility requirements of medicare, social security, is it means testing, raising the age, changing the way cost of living increases are done with social security? all of those items were on the table in july of 2011 and folks weren't happy about that on the left. the afl-cio president told salon after this election labor won't be, quote, a lapdog. see what we do. see if we aren't independent. if it's bad workers, it doesn't matter who proposes it. we won't be onboard. we won't be taken for granted. that's the game the white house has to figure out here. how much give is there in his base. still, if the white house cuts a deal, does labor really have anywhere else to go? can the president get the votes for changes to social security and medicare from democratic senators who up until now have been staunchly opposed to them. at the final senate debate, sherrod brown told me those changes in his mind are totally

off the table. are either one of you for raising the retirement age in order to deal with medicare and social security? >> the answer is no and no. if you raise the retirement age for people, eligibility age for people, maybe if you dress like this and you're the state treasur treasurer, maybe it works but for a whole lot of working americans it doesn't. >> does it work for anybody? >> no, you don't. >> sherrod brown. he won in a swing state, folks. one more thing, "the new york times" reports some democrats are latching on to a proposal first float ed by mitt romney i order to raise taxes on the rich through a hard cap on income tax deductions. the cap is similar to proposal. instead create a bucket firm dollar amount instead of a percentage, say $35,000 a year would mean potentially more savings. finally, we made a few more things about the next year in the next 24 hours. will house minority leader nancy pelosi stay or go?

pelosi has been coy about whether she plans to run for leader again. tonight she meets the top democrats. tomorrow morning another meeting with democratic leadership as she prepares for a meeting with the full democratic house caucus. will we know her plans by tomorrow night? smart money still says she probably doesn't run again, but two years ago that was where the smart money was, too. if she doesn't run, steny hoyer is as close to a shoo-in as you can get to replace her. there's just not the votes for somebody else to challenge steny hoyer but you never know. then there is defense secretary leon panetta. he was asked about his second term plans on the plane traveling to australia, and he told reporters, quote, it's no secret that at some point i would like 0 to get back to california. panetta is likely to stay in the post through the budget negotiations and possibly through the spring when they do the next round of budgets. so does that mean he's willing to stay in the pentagon for four more years? for the pool report, panetta told reporters, quote, who the hell knows? my experience in washington is you'd better do this day-to-day.

as we reported friday, one of the candidates for panetta's job, when he does go, is actually senator john kerry who is being considered for defense essentially as a consolation prize if he does not get the state department job which is what he truly covets because the assumption right now is, and there's a lot of support for her inside the white house, the president will nominate susan rice to succeed hillary clinton instead. but if rice does get nominated she could have a pretty big confirmation battle on her hands. many republicans, including a guy like south carolina senator lindsey graham who normally ends up confirming a lot of the president's appointments, did in the first term, is promising a brutal confirmation pick if rice is picked. >> i'm not entertaining promoting anybody that i think was involved with the benghazi debacle. i'm not going to promote somebody i think has misled the country or is incompetent. that's my view of susan rice. there are other people out

there. i don't want to fight with the president over something like this, but there has to be an accountability. you just can't let this happen and act as if there are no consequences. >> back to the unfolding scandal surrounding two of the country's most accomplished military leaders of their time. drawing sharp scrutiny from capitol hill, on the "today" show the chairman of the homeland security committee peter king is surprised the fbi got involved in the first place. >> this is not the type of case that usually becomes a federal investigation. cyber harassment between two women or any two people, certainly involved a love triangle or whatever it was, should not rise to this level. and i can understand why but the fact is i'm not aware of cases like this going -- the fbi conducting a federal investigation. iran and china, which is serious enough, without putting personnel on something like this. >> well, in the wake of petraeus' resignation and the investigation into general allen, things are changing on

capitol hill. general petraeus was supposed to testify on benghazi thursday. now acting cia director morell will take his place. general john allen is in washington today. he was preparing for his own confirmation hearing to be the supreme allied commander in europe. that's on hold. the hearing for joseph dunford to be allen's successor as commander in afghanistan will go ahead. look, we have all the angles covered here. nbc's capitol hill correspondent kelly o'donnell, investigative correspondent michaeli isikoff. pete williams seemed to indicate the fbi was closing its investigation of broadwell. so why have to go to her house? >> reporter: well, the fbi confirms, chuck, it did conduct a search of broadwell's house. agents were seen carrying out about half a dozen boxes of

plastic containers. "the charlotte observer" newspaper is reporting two xauters and a printer were among those taken. senior law enforcement tells pete williams, our justice correspondent, this wasn't necessa necessarily a raid but rather a consensual search. that official says this wasn't necessarily a game changer either but rather an extra step to ensure thoroughness. now the investigation into petraeus has basically conclude ed but that's not necessarily the case for broadwell. the official told pete williams that the investigation may be looking into possible inpraxs or breakings of any type of cyber stalking or that type of thing at this point as well. we haven't seen broadwell. we don't believe she was in the house while the search was being conducted. this is a fairly affluent neighborhood. but so far there's been no sight

of broadwell since the news of petraeus' resignation and that affa affair. >> to kelly o'donnell. kelly, obviously congress -- they are always upset when they're out of the loop. the question they seem to believe they should have been in the loop a lot sooner. there is some questions of whether they should have ever been informed in the middle of an investigation. what is it congress wants to deal with first? do they want to put the fbi in the hot seat? do they want to put the cia in the hot seat? where do they want to focus their attention on this? >> reporter: there's a lot of angst and it's not just about bruised feelings. members of congress on key committees believe they have a legal oversight on what's happening in these sorts of circumstances and that it's a requirement that they be included. and when you're talking about the most sensitive members at the top of the intelligence committees, they handle highly secure information all the time. they are not among those suspected of being leakers on capitol hill.

so they take this seriously. concerns that the fbi did not bring them in on this, that there had been a period of weeks there was some awareness this was going on. as you point out there are protocols with respect to investigations that if someone is a part of an investigation, not even the target of an investigation, do you bring this to members of congress. those sorts of things need to be sorted out. clearly there are frustrations here and concerns in part because now we have two very senior highly respected members of the military involved in this. former general petraeus and general allen. so they have brought bipartisan support most of the time. this is an auwkward position fo congress and frustration about what's been going on in terms of when were they told. chuck? >> kelly o'donnell on capitol hill. thanks. now to mike isikoff. mike, i just want to ask this simple question. who is jill kelley? because clearly she is in the cross hairs of broadwell and

obviously in some sort of e-mail relationship with general allen. and then this fbi friend, agent, whoever, who clearly is involved in some inappropriate behavior. who is jill kelley? >> she is the woman who triggered all this. she is a wealthy socialite in tampa. her husband is a very prominent doctor there. and she had relationships with -- friendships with a lot of the military people in cen centcom and southern command. one of the things that's interesting here, people wonder how all this got started, why the fbi got involved. the original complaint was kelley goes to this fbi agent who she knows about these anonymous threatening e-mails which initially don't talk about petraeus or refer to him. they talk about her relations with other generals in centcom and socom.

that's what we were told by a source close to kel yae. clearly that seems to be a reference to general allen. the question is, does paula broadwell know about the relationship between kelley and general allen and we can speculate on that but that's a very big question at the moment. >> all right, mike isikoff, a ton of big questions there. fiscal cliff is coming up after the break. [ female announcer ] the next generation of investing technology is now within your grasp with the e-trade 360 investing dashboard. e-trade 360 is the world's first investing homepage that shows you where all your investments are and what they're doing with free streaming quotes, news, analysis and even your trade ticket. everything exactly the way you want it, all on one page.

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the worst thing that could happen is for them simply to kick the can down the road. if they kick the can down the road, it will just continue to represent a cloud over the defense department and that's the last damn thing i need right now. congress returns to work today and with the upcoming

holidays there are just weeks to negotiate a budget deal to avoid this proverbial fiscal cliff. it remains to be seen if congress will kick the can down the road as secretary panetta warns with a short-term deal or will they reach a true grand bargain given how far they were to reform programs like social security and medicare. we shall see. joining me now wyoming senator john barrasso. he joins me now. senator, let me ask you this straight-up question. who is in charge of negotiations on behalf of the republican party with the white house? is it john boehner? >> i think the president is the only with one that can sign the agreement. john boehner needs to have an agreement that the house of representatives will pass, and i think whatever the two of them agree on will pass the senate. but expect it will be john boehner working along with the president. i'm sure mitch mcconnell will be very closely involved in the discussions with leader boehner. >> you don't believe a deal should come out of the senate and then be introduced in the house? >> well, i think the elections

are over. we need to find solutions to help our country move forward in a positive direction and as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staffs says the biggest threat to our national security is actually our debt. we need to get this spending under control and get people back to work. >> i want to talk about this issue of taxes and tax rates and get you to respond to something from not exactly someone who is known as a liberal thinker here. take a listen. >> it won't kill the country if we raise tax as little bit on millionaires. it really won't, i don't think. i don't know why republicans don't take obama's offer to freeze taxes for everyone below $250,000. make it $500,000, make it a million. the republican party is going to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted democratic and half of whom live in hollywood? >> so, i ask you the question that bill kristol put there, are you going to fall on your sword not to raise taxes on people that make over $250,000 a year?

>> i think there's a difference between raising tax rates and raising tax revenue and i want to get overall tax reform. no matter who you talk to, they will tell you that raising taxes on that group is just a small drop in the bucket of what our deficit is. it's less than one-tenth of the deficit so it doesn't solve our problem. i don't think we should do things that will hurt the economy. we need to get people back to work. >> well, his point was, though, that tax rates were much higher in the reagan years, were higher in the clinton years and both those decades had pretty good economic growth. >> but it's such a small perc t percentage of what you need to do in terms of getting the spending under control. >> a trillion dollars over ten years is a small number? >> it's $100 billion where this president has had deficits of over a trillion dollars every year so $1 out of $10, chuck. our problems are the spending on social security, on medicare, and the president's upcoming health care law expenses that are coming every year adding

much more than what could be gained by raising taxes. i don't think it's a good idea to raise taxes on anyone at a time like this. >> but can you really talk about tax rates right now if you don't have an agreed upon number, revenue number, that both sides agree to on what should come out of the tax code changes? so if it's a trillion bucks over ten years, which seems to be halfway between the $800 billion that boehner put on the table and $1 trillion over ten years, don't you have to agree to that number first before you decide what the rate is? >> i'm not going to negotiate this on television with you, chuck, and i don't think anyone would. we have to come up with a solution to help get our kcounty back into a financially stable condition. we have a $16 trillion debt. it is unsustainable. it's irresponsible. we need to work together. the elections are over. we need to solve these problems and i believe we will do that before the first of the year.

>> and just to go back to the senate, you don't want a dael to come out of the senate before it comes out of john boehner? >> we're going to have to get something that the president will sign and that the house will pass. and i think you get that, it will then ultimately have enough votes to pass in the senate. >> all right, senator john barrasso, republican from wyoming, thank you for coming on this morning. >> thank you, chuck. market rundown is next. democrats pick up another house seat and they're leading in five more. undecided races is coming up. first today's trivia question. which senator's name will now be first on the roll call of the 113th congress on the senate side? tweet me the answer @chucktodd and @dailyrundown. [ lane ] your anti-wrinkle cream is gone...

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the latest on the still uncalled house races. george allen takes his hat out of the political ring. and in the wake of the election the white house receives petitions for, wait for it, secession. but first, five house races are still undecided. democrats are leading in all five of these races and if things continue to progress that way, then it will look like the official gain would be another five seats that would make their projected pickup total of eight net house seats for the 2012 election. one race that was called last night, arizona's ninth congressional district to democrat sinema, beat the gop's vernon parker. sinema is the first openly bi-sexual person elected to congress.

is also an atheist. even though democratic candidate richard carmona conceded, carmona is keeping a close eye on the count. carmona's campaign said they're watching to make sure every last vote is tallied and they'll consider their options if the voting total tightens on that front. in virginia republican george allen told "the virginia pilot" he will not seek office ever again. allen said he was proud of the campaign he ran and that he, quote, gave it their all. this last campaign was the republican's second failed bid after losing his seat in 2006. and finally the not so united states of america since the election, residents in over a dozen states filed secession petitions to the we the people program. its platform featured on the white house website that allows people to petition the administration, nebraska, pennsylvania, oklahoma are among the states that have filed for secession according to the white

house website. the petition gets over 25,000 signatures in a 30-day period, it will be reviewed by the administration and a response will be issued. i'm sure the governors of those states will actually speak up and say how ludicrous and ridiculous this effort is. all right, the president will meet with labor leaders at the white house later this morning and with business leaders tomorrow as he trace to jump-start the economy. becky quick joins us with our market rundown. anything that is said today or comes out of this hearing? obviously the president is lining up sort of the public poll it particulars of this so he's got labor and progressives today. that could be a tough conversation on things like social security and medicare. tomorrow's business. the conversation is probably about taxes. >> that's right. it's all leading up to friday when he will be meeting with the leaders of both of the house and the senate from both parties. so you're going to have this kind of drumbeat, this constant drumbeat coming all weeklong. chuck, we've been talking about the fiscal cliff. some people joked around we should make it a drinking game.

every time we say fiscal cliff, you should take a drink at home. i wouldn't recommend because it's going to make for a very long day and a very long week. wall street is watching all of this, kind of watching how it shapes up. the rhetoric on both sides, what they expect may come out at the end of it. today we spoke with the ceo of xerox, one of the business leaders heading to the white house tomorrow to speak with the president about this. she told us she'd like to make a couple of points to the president. first of all, she will be listening to what he has to say. "a," this has to happen from a logic perfespective. she can't imagine the politicians will allow us to go over the fiscal cliff and that, "b," we need to see some positive action that's taken from this. from her perspective she would like to see a tax policy more business friendly. most business leaders mean that's a tax policy you lower the rate but cut out 0 the loopholes so everyone pays a higher effective rate not just the marginal rate.

it's something we're watching. the market is opening a little bit lower today, maybe down by about 60 points right now. we'll see where this shakes out as we get to the closing bell. >> all right. we'll be watching. thank you, becky. next, look what i have here, back to the board. the deep dive into how catholics ended up voting. is it the best voting group to watch more than any other? i'll explain why. so if you thought the independent vote was the best indicator which way a presidential election is heading, think again. romney won by five points.

he still lost. john kerry won independents in 2004. he lost. today taking a deep dive into what may be the most accurate predictor of all the subgroups of presidential outcomes, the catholic vote. catholics made up a quarter of the electorate in 2012 and for the third election in a row the skrout come of the catholic vote nearly mirrored the overall vote almost exactly. let me show you here and get inside these numbers here. look at this. george w. bush 2004. he won catholic voters, 52% to 47%. and he won the election 51% to 48%. let's move on. this is barack obama in 2008. catholic voters 54% to 45%. overall election 53% to 46%. just a two-point deviation overall. nine points versus seven here. let's look at 2012. catholic vote 50% to 48%. overall vote 51% to 48%.

just a one-point deviation if you will overall. something interesting inside the catholic vote. the president -- white catholics and nonwhite catholics and this mattered. look at this, the president lost white catholics in 2008 by just five points. it was actually a real hadly good showing for a democrat among white catholics. this time he lost white catholics 59% to 40%, nearly 20%. well, guess what made the difference? latino catholics. in 2008 he won 72% to 26%. when the percentage was lower than it is now. so in 2012 he won hispanic catholics by a greater margin and, as you know, hispanics made up a bigger portion of the electorate. so once again it gives you why the catholic vote overall gives you a nice mix in letting you know which way the country is heading. we know another of interest to folks was jewish voters, how is the president going to do? a lot of predictions among

republicans that he wasn't going to do as well as he did four years ago. this was his number four years ago, 7 l% to 21%. well, those predictions about him doing worse were right. he got under 70% this time. mitt romney got the 30%. it is the best showing for a republican among jewish voters since 1988 when michael dukakis got only 64% and george h.w. bush got 35% of the jewish vote. so clearly some inroads were made there potential ly by mitt romney. there are some democrats that tell me they think there's a sandy effect on jewish voters because a lot of northeastern voters in general just didn't cast the amount of ballots and maybe the president would have gotten over 70%. we'll see in 2016. our political panel will be here next. but first the white house soup of the day -- i think this should be the official soup of

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and for the republican nomination and, of course, that one was successful. the scandal continues to grow around david tpetraeus as his successor general john allen is now linked to the controversy or at least linked to some of the players. let's bring in our panel, political director for the grio.com, and columnist with bloomberg view, and stephanie is the president of emily's list and i also have james from the national journal who is out with a brand-new piece on this entire episode. so, james, i want to start with you because i thought this was a very striking -- you sort of write about -- trying to write about this from 30,000 feet, the impact on national security. this is what you write, no one is condoning what petraeus did, but there are a lot of self-righteous people holding him to a standard that not many people could meet without considering what he sacrificed because of the years of separation from his spouse and family, said one army general. there's a lack of proportionality between the crime and the reaction.

we are suddenly treating like a leper an incredibly talented individual who still had a lot to offer his country. i would say the conundrum probably for those in the media even and for those who practice po politics is, well, we've been drawing the line at a more moralistic way for the last decade or so, so why shouldn't petraeus be held to the same standard? >> well, i'm not actually saying that he shouldn't be held to the same standard but i think a lot of americans don't appreciate the incredible strains we put on these people's personal lives, on their marriages when we send them to multiple combat deployments that are year long. in petraeus' case one that was 18 months long. he had four combat deployments. it's very hard to imagine that that didn't affect in some ways his marriage. again, i kind of use the petraeus case as a rheaume nation about what we expect, what i call america's warrior monks. we expect them never to take a

drink, never to philander. they have no privacy zone. your e-mails can be read, as we saw in this case. i'm just making the point, i think, in this piece we're asking a lot of these people and when they sort of give in to human foibles it shouldn't surprise us. >> you also -- i believe it was in your piece i read you talked about the divorce rate among younger, sort of the first and second tours of duties. for first -time marriages, did see 80%? >> yeah. the military doesn't track divorce rates in a holistic way but i did a story last year on the wounds of this war and divorce is a huge wound to this war. in one year -- it increased by one percentage point between 9/11 in 2010 but it was 3.06%. if you extrapolate that over a 20-year career, if you were married when you got in, you got plus 60% chance of being divorced by the time you hit 20.

one year, 7.8% of females in the military were divorced that single year. extrapolate that over ten years you're well over 50%. >> all right. let's build off james' point here. is there -- this question always comes up when we have politicians who get caught with personal behavior issues and here we are with petraeus. are we making too much of it or is this the new code of conduct that washington expects out of its leaders? >> look, i think you have to have a lot of sympathy for general petraeus who gave a lot to this country, has been an enormously capable public servant. on the other hand, this is such a spectacular scandal that it's sort of hard to see him staying in place through it all. it would have been such a huge distraction for the cia which, of course, has a lot else on its plate right now. >> stephanie, we ran a poll question today about something we have found over time, the

military has sort of weathered the storm. as the country has lost faith in every institution, the president, majorities don't have trust, president, congress, government, media, you can go right down the line. thank god for members of congress or the media we'd be even lower. but is this a case and say men behaving badly and this is why more and more are struggling and a group like yours is having success? >> we have the conversations a lot amongst our membership. emily's list has 2 million members, the majority are women. it is a discussion because we don't see these types of scandals very often if at all. i can't think of one. >> admitting that happens. >> just doesn't happen -- >> women in power don't have the same -- >> and part of it is that we're still -- women really have to

fight incredibly hard to get where they are still today. they have to go the extra mile. they have to prove themselves over and over and over again. i mean, even look at tammy baldwin running for the united states senate and no one thought she could win. no one thought she could win even until the day the votes were being counted they didn't think she could win. she had to prove herself beyond it. and i think that's part of why we don't see these types of things with women leaders. >> is this the media's fault? how much are we playing a role in this? is. >> i don't think we are in this case. he was asked to resign. that's where it came from. it's us judging him as much -- >> anticipating -- >> perhaps the case. >> how the feed iing frenzy arod stories like had develop. >> that's true. it's also the cia director. this is different than a senator having an affair. the cia director more liable to blackmail. >> james, i have to ask this, we have two generals now, general allen, general petraeus, is this coincidence, two generals caught up in something like this or is

there a culture here among the top commanders if they can get away with anything? >> i don't think there's a culture. we haven't gotten to the bottom of this case. it's much more than coincidence the same people are involved, so there is something going on here. it's obviously going to be investigated and rightfully so. but i don't think they think they have impunity but are under really extraordinary circumstances and those circumstances might lend themselves in some cases to affairs and things like this. >> how concerned are you, would you be about morale? >> you know, mildly concerned. as i said in my piece, this rang ls with a lot of people who understood petraeus was really an extraordinary leader, that he had skills and talents that just don't come around every day. probably the best strategic thinker of his generation of office officers. so we lost somebody who was very, very valuable in this continuing fight.

and so i think people just feel very sad about that. >> james kitfield, national journal's outstanding reporter on defense and military issues. james, always a pleasure. thanks for joining me this morning. >> thanks, chuck. >> all right. you guys are sticking around and we'll talk about the fiscal cliff. i want to talk about issues, the abortion issue and how it played to the democratic advantage all coming up after the break. trivia, which senator's name will be first on the roll call of the 113th congress? the answer, as many of you got, senator lamar alexander. akaka has been first for nearly 22 years. as somebody points out todd akin had he won would have been ahead of alexander on that front but, alas, he did not. i look at her, and i just want to give her everything.

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let's bring back the panel. all right, i want to talk about, stephanie, what benefited you, emily's list, it's a pro-choice, abortion rights activist group. 20 years of democrats running away from the abortion issue it was a benefit. i want to show some numbers nationally. the exit polls. should abortions be legal in most cases? we combined the two, look at these numbers, 59% and 36%. in ohio, a little bit more of on consecutive catholic population, 56%, 39%. is this why the abortion issue was so effective? >> for 20 years, we hear the republican party not talking about the extremist of their

positions. what we saw this cycle, the extreme positions. it has been their platform for a while, they don't try -- finally, we heard it come out of its mouth. >> this was the issue for republicans, right? the todd akin. the richard mourdock. gave platform that had when is period about. >> when republicans played along with highlighting it as opposed to tax-funding of abortion. they're playing into the democrats hand. >> when the conversation is about one of the extreme positions, that's when the other side -- when they're sort of able to win the moderate middle argument.

the moderate middle said, maybe we don't like some of these things. >> it was so striking to watch the democratic convention how many people -- every speaker said something about abortion. >> six years ago, howard dean was saying, appealing, got to recruit pro-life democrats. >> or the virginia ads. colorado. so ads emphasizing that romney was wrong on abortion. >> stephanie, you guys have a had a lot of success electing women in congress. 170 women ran for congress. and success rate basically just around 50%, little less for the house, 82%. 82 out of 170 won. this is obviously, a trend, there were some nervousness that

the trend could go down. >> it did two years ago, 2010, we saw the first decline in the women percentage of congress. what we saw this year, particularly among emily's list candidates we went 9 for 10. 9 out of 10 women won which was incredible. >> wisconsin. >> massachusetts. >> only loss was nevada. >> that's right. >> the most underrepresented demographic in congress are pro-life women. >> it's interesting about this is the number of women in the house republican congress went down. this widens the perceptions that democrats are becoming the party of women than republicans. >> it goes with the democrats are doing more to recruit women. not surprising. >> stephanie, i'll let you go

first. >> tomorrow, tomorrow emily's list is releasing research about women's voters. >> rames snshgs? >> jonathan martin has an interview with bobby jindal. >> the quote is, we don't want to be the stupid party. >> the party of the 53% anymore. thank you all. that's it for this edition of the daily rundown. we'll see you tomorrow. bye-bye. what if there was a new way to deal with money that focused less on fees and more... on what matters?

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